Acta Veterinaria et Zootechnica Sinica ›› 2025, Vol. 56 ›› Issue (9): 4604-4614.doi: 10.11843/j.issn.0366-6964.2025.09.038

• Preventive Veterinary Medicine • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Identification and Isolation of a Caprine Coronavirus and Analysis of the Complete Genome Sequence

YU Qiurong1,2(), CAI Xuhang2, HE Yi3, LI Jizong2, MAO Li2,*(), XU Xingang1,*(), LI Bin2   

  1. 1. College of Veterinary Medicine, Northwest A&F University, Yangling 712100, China
    2. Key Laboratory of Engineering Technology for Veterinary Biological Products of Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Institute of Veterinary Science, Nanjing 210014, China
    3. Chengguan Agriculture (Animal Husbandry) Development Service Center of Fukang City, Fukang 831500, China
  • Received:2024-10-14 Online:2025-09-23 Published:2025-09-30
  • Contact: MAO Li, XU Xingang E-mail:yuqiurong2233@163.com;mao-li@live.cn;tiger2003@nwsuaf.edn.cn

Abstract:

Coronavirus is one of the most important pathogen causing respiratory and digestive diseases in humans and animals. In order to enrich the epidemiological data of coronaviruses in China, we conducted this study on the isolation of caprine coronavirus (cpCoV) from diarrheal goat samples in Xinjiang, and further identified the biological characteristics systemly. Rectal swab samples of goats suffering diarrhea from Xinjiang were tested positive by RT-PCR for epidemiological investigation, and the positive samples were treated and inoculated with HRT-18G cells. A novel cpCoV, named as cpCoV/XJCJ2301G, was isolated and identified with obvious cytopathogenic effect. The virus was detected positively by IFA, the purified virus was observed as the diameter of 100 nm with a crown-like surrounding by transmission electron microscopy. According to the genetic evolution analysis, the XJCJ2301G strain was belong to Embecovirus of β-CoVs, which formed an independent evolutionary cluster together with the present cpCoVs. The NS4a and NS4b gene sequences of XJCJ2301G strain have a 75 nt deletion, resulting in truncation or elongation of non-structural proteins. Through sequence alignment analysis of the S gene, it was found that the differences between cpCoV and BCoV mainly present in the CTD region. CpCoV was isolated from Xinjiang for the first time, and this strain enriched the epidemiological data of animal coronavirus. Notably, there was a stepwise pattern deletion between NS4a and NS4b among bovine coronavirus, caprine coronavirus, cpCoV/XJCJ2301G and rabbit coronavirus. Strain XJCJ2301G should be a key node and play a vital role in the evolution of herbivore coronaviruses.

Key words: caprine coronavirus, isolation and identification, whole genome sequencing, evolutionary analysis

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